Children's world of experience
The major focus of this research is on methods to help designers gain insight in and empathy with children's worlds of experience, their needs, interests and likes, as expressed by children themselves. This is primarily done through the development of contextmapping research techniques for application with children. Through these methods, designers can include children's own viewpoint in design projects and escape from all too fixed or biased adult views on what is good, interesting and necessary within play and other children's activities.
Most of the other research publications had their origins in design and education projects conducted at the faculty.
Play for the future
In this research, the use of modern technology to create novel play with great play value is the focus. Directions for the play of tomorrow are explored in design projects and interesting findings on the design, its underlying theories and design methodologies are presented.
Moving design
In this research, toys for the expression of emotions through body movements were designed, validated and tested.
The research is of interest to designers who want to incorporate movement in their designs to evoke emotional responses and has been published in The Design Journal.
It also yielded results about the understanding and appreciation of these toys by children. These results, of a more pedagogic nature, are described in a paper, presented at the 2004 ICCP conference.
The research has been undertaken by Jeske Weerdesteijn with the guidance of Pieter Desmet.
Unlimited play
In a long-term cooperation with 'Stichting Bio-Kinderrevalidatie', an organization devoted to the well-being of children with physical handicaps and their families, Delft UT has developed over 30 products and concepts for daily life aids and products for play and recreation of these children. Experiences from this cooperation have been presented in publications for practitioners and researchers.
contact
Mathieu GielenLandbergstraat 15
2628 CE Delft
room: 10-2A-41
phone: 015-2782749
email: m.a.gielen@tudelft.nl
Links to interesting sites
Platform Ruimte voor de jeugdArrak anagrams
Links to related topics:
ID-Studiolabour research
People who inspired me
Mickey MouseBrian Sutton-Smith
Michael Apter